Digiscoping
is the technique of pointing a digital camera down the eyepiece of a scope
[or binoculars]. You
need: a digital camera with at least 2 megapixels; a scope; something to
connect the camera and scope together; a tripod with a solid head; remote/cable
release.With
digiscoping you get lots of magnification [typically equivalent to a
2000-3000 mm SLR lens] and the other side of that coin is vibration/camera
shake. Almost all the early disappointments you have with digiscoping are
because of "uncontrolled" vibrations.

Nthrule
take loads of shots – if you get a good or co-operative bird keep
shooting until you run out of memory or the bird dies of old age! [Note:
have extra memory]

Incredibly
you can take several shots of the same bird, under the same conditions,
with the same settings and you can have one sharp, well-focused shot and
the other 20 out-of-focus-blurs. So … take loads of shots.

I
read that you should take lots of pix when I first started with the 995
but it took me about a year to really appreciate it.

Other
things I was told and nowbelieve:

Get
a good tripod with a solid head - carbon fibre have good steady/weight
ratio but even then the head is as important

Set
the ISO to 100 and leave it there [don’t be tempted to go to 400/800
to get that extra bit of speed – it’s never worth it]

Get/make
an adaptor to fix the camera to the eyepiece [EagleEye/LCE make them for
£70-90]

Get/make
a cable release adaptor [Jessops make one for about £20 without
cable! The Nikon electronic one has a couple of drawbacks and has a
poor reliability reputation [on BirdPix]

Get/make
an LCD shade – it can be impossible to see the LCD with sunlight on
it [the EagleEye one has a magnifier, which shows the pixel, but is better
than nothing in sunlight – in a hide or in
“non-direct-sunlight-conditions” I don’t use it]

Settings

In
our light conditions [UK] I think the best
setting is Aperture priority [set at the lowest Coolpix value ie 5.1 at full
zoom]. That way you get the fastest shutter speed possible.

If
the bird is dark against a light background you can use the
“exposure compensation” function – [for Coolpix press the Funct2 button on
the top of the camera and turn the dial - +0.3 to +1.0 can work -
disadvantage of this is, however, that you get colour fringing around
the outline of the bird and a lower shutter speed ie more chance of
blurring]

If
the light is very good and/or the bird is very static [eg owl/raptor
or asleep!] it can help to decrease the aperture [bigger number] to
get more depth of field [more things in focus] – but you need to be
sure of negligible vibration – if it’s at all windy – leave the
whole kit at home!

I
use “Fine” quality and “Full” size – that way you get 40
shots from a 64 Meg card. All the experts use those quality settings
so I mindlessly follow. “Normal” gets you 78
shots but the jpeg has twice the compression. If it looks as though
I’m going to run out of memory I’ll go to “Normal”.

Focussing

There
are two popular ways to do this:

Focus
on the bird with the scope and then, in the macro [flower on the Coolpix] position, allow
the camera to autofocus for you – I suggest this method is good if: you
have to take a grab shot [quickly], the bird is moving position a lot,
there is good light [autofocus doesn't work well if the contrast is poor] and the bird is away from any twigs or bits of grass
which might fool the autofocus

Focus
on the bird with the scope with the focus set to infinity [INF] – this
method is good in low contrast conditions when the autofocus doesn’t
always work reliably; when there is something between you and the bird [eg
twig, grass] which will fool the autofocus. This method needs more time as
a good way to get sharp focus is to zoom in [with the digital zoom as
well] focus on some part of the bird [typically, the eye] and then zoom
out before taking the picture.

On
BirdPix there was a poll of members and the split was about even
between the two
methods!

What
is it worthwhile shooting?

For
record purposes – shoot anything [even at ISO 800!]. But for the rest
– unless the bird occupies at least 25% of the LCD it won’t look very
good on a screen [it should fill the scope at 60x zoom]. No detail in the feathers, no sharpness in the eye. Lots
of the “players” on BirdPix claim not to crop images at all ie bird
filling the LCD. I can’t say I stick to this but to get really sharp,
crisp images you have to fill the viewing screen [which means quite close
for a small bird].

The
order of events ...

Exactly
what & when you do depends on lots of things but what I generally do
is:

Get
the bird in the scope [at low magnification]

Focus
[and if you have to, zoom in]

Attach
camera

Zoom
the camera in until the vignette disappears

Auto
focus and, using a remote/cable or timer, click - several times!

If the bird is calm and stays
still:

Set camera to manual [to
INFinity]

Focus through the
viewfinder [you can use the digital zoom for this - it can help but
remember to zoom out again before you click!]

Use the
remote/cable or timer, click - several times!

Another
method of focusing has been described on Birds-Pix:

Get
the bird in the scope [at the magnification you're going to use]

Use
one barrel of your binoculars to look down the eyepiece and focus the
scope

Don’t
be disappointed at the start – as I’m fond of saying “It was 3
months before I got a picture that was sharp”. It does take practice. I was
a keen 35mm photographer for over 20 years and I’m still getting the hang of “digiscoping”.

Click
the picture below to see how Photoshop can be used to improve the results
of digiscoping